While the skydiver avoided harm, a sandbag attached to the Texas flag that trailed behind him smashed into the driver's side door of Harvick's No. 29 Chevrolet, sitting on pit road before the AAA Texas 500.

It took about 30 minutes for the Richard Childress Racing team to repair the damage.

"He flew in a little too low," said Harvick crew chief Gil Martin, who was at the prerace driver and crew chief meeting when the accident happened. "Fortunately he didn't get hurt. It's a little bit of cosmetic damage we had to repair.

"It will be all right. It's not going to hurt how it drives."

Harvick will start 23rd.

His car was pushed to the garage, fixed and ready about 90 minutes before the green flag scheduled for 3:19 p.m. ET.

NASCAR officials watched the RCR crew make repairs. Harvick's car was not jacked up and the hood was not opened, so it did not have to go through additional inspection.

Repairs though were needed for the dented door.

"It definitely would have [affected the car] because it opened up some of the seams … and the car would have had air leaks right there," Martin said. "(NASCAR) gave us enough time to fix it like we needed to.

"It's no worse for the wear. The guy is all right, so it's all good."

It was just a bizarre incident in a rough season for the winless Harvick team.

"This just caps it off right here," said Martin, who replaced Shane Wilson as crew chief in August. "So maybe something really good will come out of this. We got a lot of good publicity so sponsors ought to like it."